Today's blog topic comes from a story suggested by a reader that emailed the Register Star.

A Register Star reader accused the Rockford Park District of inappropriately mixing government and religion by hosting a Salvation Army donation drive.

The email came to me via our executive editor Mark Baldwin last week as I was working on a similarly themed story about prayer at government meetings.

The email said that the Park District has Salvation Army donation barrels at Carlson Ice Arena, 4150 Perryville Road, Loves Park.

"First of all we have separation of state and church and the Park District is a government agency," the email reads. "They are a church and don't help people with other religious beliefs or same sex couples."

Dollye Kozel, the local Salvation Army's director of community relations, told me the Christian nonprofit organization serves people in need regardless of their religious beliefs or sexual orientation.

Also, the simple act of allowing a Christian group to place donation barrels in a government building doesn't amount to any violation, said J. Mitchell Pickerill, a law professor at Northern Illinois University.

I was interviewing Pickerill for Sunday's story about the Supreme Court taking up a New York town's case involving prayer at government meetings. I asked him to weigh in on the reader's complaint about the Park District.

As long as there isn't evidence that the Park District allowed the Salvation Army to set up barrels, but denied the same access to another religious group it wouldn't be a violation, he said.

"Absent that evidence, I wouldn't see any issues there," Pickerill said.

In fact, he said, government commonly partners with religious organizations. I wrote about one such example last month, where Rockford and Winnebago County partnered with Lutheran Social Services of Illinois for a prisoner reentry program.

"It's very common for taxpayer dollars to go to religious groups to deliver social services," Pickerill said. "It could go to a religious sponsored soup kitchen, for example. But that group can't discriminate on who they serve based on religion."